A lot of small businesses focus on creating sales campaigns and forget that the best way to reach goals is to make sure you are delivering what your clients really want. With that in mind, the key elements of a successful campaign are to test, test, and test and then measure the results.
Marketers often struggle to meet all the deadlines for each email blast, monthly newsletter, and social media updates, not to mention all the other things in between. In this frenzy marketing mix, few take the moment to ask themselves, “Did we remember to test what we’re doing?”

Why aren’t marketers testing?

Most people focus on how time consuming it is to create a test than just to create the campaign alone. Even the simplest test requires modifications of some sort and this can take a lot of taught and planning. However; the payback can bring a higher return than just emailing your campaign. By testing, you can find out if future campaigns would work as good as they should.

The take away

Smart marketers should always test and the best way to do this is by doing an A/B test. Legendary retailer John Wanamaker once said, “Half of my advertising is wasted, I just wish I knew which half.” Not only does testing improve the campaign that you are testing, but it can also lead to new ideas that will make the next promotion more effective from the start.

November is here and it is time to get in the holiday cheer. A survey conducted by the National Retail Federation has found that 36% of shoppers decide where to shop based on offers for sales and discounts. So, now with that information it is time to plan your holiday promotions.

Put some thought into how much you want to discount and for how long your promotion will run. Keep in mind that shorter and more frequent offers work better during the holiday season. For instance: 1 day sale, 3 days only, and weekend only offers worked wonders. You can also try scheduling promotions to be send during the evening hours or on the weekends that people are at home and more likely to see their emails. You can even share your promotions on social sites and offer additional discounts when they are shared.

Here are some promo ideas

- Offer multiple discounts according to amount purchase.

- Create specials for a select amount of hours.

- Feature gifts by price point like under $10, under $25 for shoppers with a limited budget.

- Send an offer to customers who recently made a purchase.

It’s pretty easy to take a standard promotion, put a creative spin on it and come up with something fun and unique that can surprise your customers.

November is here and it is time to get in the holiday cheer. A survey conducted by the National Retail Federation has found that 36% of shoppers decide where to shop based on offers for sales and discounts. So, now with that information it is time to plan your holiday promotions.

Put some thought into how much you want to discount and for how long your promotion will run. Keep in mind that shorter and more frequent offers work better during the holiday season. For instance: 1 day sale, 3 days only, and weekend only offers worked wonders. You can also try scheduling promotions to be send during the evening hours or on the weekends that people are at home and more likely to see their emails. You can even share your promotions on social sites and offer additional discounts when they are shared.

Here are some promo ideas

- Offer multiple discounts according to amount purchase.
- Create specials for a select amount of hours.
- Feature gifts by price point like under $10, under $25 for shoppers with a limited budget.
- Send an offer to customers who recently made a purchase.

It’s pretty easy to take a standard promotion, put a creative spin on it and come up with something fun and unique that can surprise your customers.

Many people may have a lot of work to do in this area, but even if your rates have stayed relatively unchanged, there are still major opportunities to improve your deliverability and increase revenue.

Here is how:

Stay ahead of the deliverability curve — The rules of deliverability are complex and always changing. The constant cat and mouse game between spammers, internet service providers and spam filtering companies ensure that there will always be new methods to sort the good senders from the bad ones.

Analyze your deliverability data — Deliverability decisions are data driven, and it can be challenging to find out exactly why you’re seeing inbox failure. Doing deeper analysis on your subscriber engagement data can yield huge results. For example, some segments of your subscribers may be more tolerant of higher frequency where others may not.

Monitor your reputation — It sounds simple, but in most cases managing one’s email marketing reputation is not that straightforward. Remember, it’s the marketer’s job to manage his or her own sending behavior since most deliverability issues occur from a breakdown in subscriber engagement and feedback.

Make sure you build a legitimate list of contacts, permission provides a foundation for delivering value, because the people on your address list are interested in the emails you send, so what you really want is the biggest possible list of individuals who have asked to hear about what you offer, and not just a lot of random email addresses. Also, choose a great ESP such as Emailbrain for your needs: An ESP (Email Service Provider) hosts email marketing software online, which is specifically optimized to do the heavy-lifting for bulk newsletter sending. Before you start emailing, it’s vital that you choose the best choose the best ESP for your business.

Do not forget that it is also important to target your data and that sending irrelevant or generic emails can be risky, as these may provoke recipients to ignore your messages or mark them as spam. Since subscribers have individual likes, as your list grows it becomes important to identify groups that share similar interests and use segmentation (the practice of clustering addresses) to improve your results, by sending appealing content targeted to their specific wants.

Also, it is important to design your newsletters With Mobile in Mind, with email inboxes more crowded than ever, at least half of the battle is in finding ways to stand out from the masses with the quality of your design. Make sure to add a clear unsubscribe link, spam complaints can have a disastrous effect on your sender reputation. Unfortunately, even when people have explicitly signed up for an email they may still use the “report spam” button. Some readers even use the report spam button instead of going through the proper unsubscribe process, since both tactics have the same outcome for them.
Always write an appealing subject line and increase your open rate. By writing a subject line is a very important element of your communications strategy that you shouldn’t leave until deadlines are looming. These first few characters are the doorstep to your emailing success; since it’s all you have to entice readers to open your message. Since a subject line should distill the essence of an email, consider writing it first, as this will help keep your content from straying off topic.

Try to avoid advertising your address on any websites and forums where you do not have complete control of your own privacy. If for some reason you would need to include an email address, try to obscure it for spam bots.

Make sure you unsubscribe: A good email marketing company will ensure that their users include unsubscribe options in all email headers and /or footers. With that said, many people believe that clicking an unsubscribe link actually confirms to a spammer that the user exists/actively reads their mail.

It is a must that you read the fine print and privacy policy when signing up for anything. Often there is a text box that you need to select to opt out of receiving email marketing material from the company in question.

Create separate addresses for core communications and disposable ones for general use: It would be a good idea to have one email account for your banking, mortgage, e-statements and so on – all of your essential life necessities.

Mark unwanted mail as spam: Email services such as Hotmail and Gmail will create a filter to automatically spot all future mail from that source as junk and it will submit a complaint against the network that sent the mail to reputation monitoring services

Do not submit your email address to websites or companies that you are unfamiliar with and / or have no reason to trust. You wouldn’t think of giving your mobile number to strangers, after all – the same justification applies to your email address.

A disposable address is an inbox that you will typically use when a store asks you to fill out your details for purposes such as future specials, club membership or anything that’s not important to you or that you want to specifically keep separate.

Once your clients receive your email in their inbox, you only have a few moments to get their attention. Make sure you grab their attention and they do not get distracted by doing the following:

Many business owners compose unbearably mind-numbing and dull emails that are nothing more than exhausted appeals for people to buy their products or make use of their services. Comprise all varieties of subjective material about lifestyles and anything else that is significant, including current happenings, trends and applicable material to you and the industry you are in.

As quickly as you can, be sure to invoke what you’re offering and why it’s of any use or benefit for the consumer. Be concise, clearly communicating to clients on their level. Use points they can relate to. Also be clear about subsequent phases, directing them towards a call-to-action and cultivating them to action the process.

Your message design should be as flawless as your email content. Avoid disorderly designs or a layout that counters your message as opposed to complimenting it. Allow the design to be as simple and direct to see as the content is. Make sure the design permits the customer to easily follow call to action and inspires them to act.

Make a point of having one specific message that you would want the audience to take to heart. Whether it’s directing them to a page site and making use of a new feature or to purchase a product on sale. Simply ensure you have something in every single email because you are subconsciously training your readers to take action when you bring it to their attention.

Forget sending info-driven emails that are cluttered; they don’t appeal to audiences by and large. Clients need to have a bond with you and not addressed as a superior being. So write from one human being to another, that way they will feel more identified with your email.

Once your clients receive your email in their inbox, you only have a few moments to get their attention. Make sure you grab their attention and they do not get distracted by doing the following:

Many business owners compose unbearably mind-numbing and dull emails that are nothing more than exhausted appeals for people to buy their products or make use of their services. Comprise all varieties of subjective material about lifestyles and anything else that is significant, including current happenings, trends and applicable material to you and the industry you are in.

As quickly as you can, be sure to invoke what you’re offering and why it’s of any use or benefit for the consumer. Be concise, clearly communicating to clients on their level. Use points they can relate to. Also be clear about subsequent phases, directing them towards a call-to-action and cultivating them to action the process.

Your message design should be as flawless as your email content. Avoid disorderly designs or a layout that counters your message as opposed to complimenting it. Allow the design to be as simple and direct to see as the content is. Make sure the design permits the customer to easily follow call to action and inspires them to act.

Make a point of having one specific message that you would want the audience to take to heart. Whether it’s directing them to a page site and making use of a new feature or to purchase a product on sale. Simply ensure you have something in every single email because you are subconsciously training your readers to take action when you bring it to their attention.

Forget sending info-driven emails that are cluttered; they don’t appeal to audiences. Clients need to have a bond with you, so write from one human being to another, that way they will feel more identified with your email.

For the creation of your newsletters, you have several options of how to create them so they can look very professional and always be catchy. Here we give you several options of programs that you can use to create your email marketing newsletters:

• Dreamweaver: Excellent to create HTML and build your newsletters.
• Fireworks and Photoshop: For the creation of the sketch these are the ideal tools. Even once finalized and approved the design, you can generate HTML that will help the final construction.
• Email Standards Project: This web site is definitely the ultimate for any inconvenience mail programs.
• Inline Styler: if you have designed your newsletters with CSS styles in the header of the HTML, you can transfer them to inline styles.
• Emailbrain Editor: With our editor you can select a template and modify it to your style.
• Designed by a professional: in Emailbrain we have professionals who can create your newsletter design based on your needs. For more information click here.